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History of Christianity

Quaker Studies

Religious Society of Friends

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

'Chipping At The Landmarks Of Our Fathers': The Decline Of The Testimony Against Hireling Ministry In The Nineteenth Century, Thomas D. Hamm Feb 2015

'Chipping At The Landmarks Of Our Fathers': The Decline Of The Testimony Against Hireling Ministry In The Nineteenth Century, Thomas D. Hamm

Quaker Studies

One of the distinctive features of Quakerism from the 1650s until the 1870s was its stance against any kind of pay for ministers, what Friends referred to as 'hireling ministry'. Friends viewed a paid, authoritative pastoral ministry as contrary to Scripture, as tending toward preaching that pleased humans rather than God, as limiting the leadings of the Holy Spirit, and as generally corrupting. One of the criticisms of Orthodox by Hicksite Friends in the 1 820s was that the Orthodox were compromising this testimony by associating with clergy of other denominations in reform and humanitarian causes, and both Orthodox and …


Virtuous Friends: Morality And Quaker Identity, Jackie Leach Scully Jan 2015

Virtuous Friends: Morality And Quaker Identity, Jackie Leach Scully

Quaker Studies

Recent work in moral philosophy and psychology has made deep connections between questions of morality and identity, suggesting that orientation to a moral framework, through community practices and discourses, contributes to the individual sense of self. I argue that contemporary Liberal Quakers in Britain thus use their moral judgments among other things to reinforce their social identity as Quakers, emphasising a shared approach to ethical framework and sources of authority over the substantive content of the judgments. The favoured ethical framework of Liberal British Quakers appears to be a form of virtue ethics, and I explore the possibility that links …


Patterns And Practices Of Women's Leadership In The Yorkshire Quaker Community, 1760-1820, Helen Plant Nov 2014

Patterns And Practices Of Women's Leadership In The Yorkshire Quaker Community, 1760-1820, Helen Plant

Quaker Studies

By the second half of the eighteenth century, women ministers had become the principal upholders of the spiritual life of Quakerism in Yorkshire. Drawing on a range of sources including the institutional records of Quaker Meetings, personal correspondence and spiritual journals and autobiographies, this paper aims to shed light on the precise nature of female leadership in the Religious Society of Friends and to contribute to greater understanding of the conditions under which it became dominant. It suggests that the growing tendency for women to outnumber men as ministers was closely linked to wider social and economic trends within contemporary …